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Am new to the board and wanted to express my thoughts on the last episode, Made in America and the ending. If you remember the episode, the whole show was about suspicion. Every character in every scene you were suspecting to get whacked or whack someone. I believe in the end, the audience was whacked. We were not suspecting the show to end when and how it did. We were made to believe that everyone was going to whack Tony in the diner. The mog was to obvious. Tony had his family around him. It was a happy time. New York was back in harmony with NJ. Life goes on, but the show ended when we didn't expect. The viewers were whacked big time. Great ending to a great series.

The audience was whacked insofar as they were looking at the scene as it was unfolding through Tony's eyes. The whole series was a witness to the experience of mob existence and Tony was the viewer's vicarious channel to his fictional universe.

Think of the Holsten scene as virtual reality.

Your proclamation that Tony didn't die might be worth considering another proposition. Tony never lived in the first place.

The audience was whacked insofar as they were looking at the scene as it was unfolding through Tony's eyes. The whole series was a witness to the experience of mob existence and Tony was the viewer's vicarious channel to his fictional universe.

Think of the Holsten scene as virtual reality.

Your proclamation that Tony didn't die might be worth considering another proposition. Tony never lived in the first place.

conkom wrote:The audience was whacked insofar as they were looking at the scene as it was unfolding through Tony's eyes. The whole series was a witness to the experience of mob existence and Tony was the viewer's vicarious channel to his fictional universe.

Think of the Holsten scene as virtual reality.

Your proclamation that Tony didn't die might be worth considering another proposition. Tony never lived in the first place.

Well noted. Just don't buy the idea that he was whacked by the mog. Too obvious and don't see that happening.

The main focus of the scene was the table with the family. However subsequent viewings mog's presence would be less and less benign.

It is mog who turns around and looks at the table.

He then walks pass the family and makes his way to the bathroom which is situated at Tony's immediate right (3 o'clock).

Remember the first episode of season 6 was "Member's Only". In that episode Eugene wears that same type of jacket and walks into a diner and kills Terry Spirodakis for debts unpaid.

Mog has an unsettling resemblence to Johnny Boy Soprano.

Chase's least ambiguous statement about the scene was when he compared it to an earlier hit in which Silvio was present with reference to Tony and Bobby's conversation on the boat. This is in an interview with Richard Belzer in 2008;

Richard Belzer: I was working with Steve Schirripa recently. We were judging Last Comic Standing for NBC and we were talking about a lot of different things, obviously. And he was saying that he heard all these theories about the show that weren't, had nothing to do with what your intention was or what any of the actors thought. Like little hints along the way. Like a word. Like when Tony and Steve are on the boat at the lake and they say "you can never know it's gonna happen" or "you never know when it's gonna hit you."

David Chase:Thatwaspartoftheending.

Richard Belzer: Oh, it was? You see, what do I know? Are there other things that were in previous episodes that were a hint towards it?

David Chase: There was that. And there was a shooting to which Silvio was a witness. Well, he wasn't a witness, he was eating dinner with a couple of hookers and some other guy who got hit and there was some visual stuff that went on there which sort of amplified Tony's remarks to Bacala about, you know, "you don't know it's happened" or "you won't know it happens when it hits you." That's about it.

Chase clearly states that these incidents are pointers to the ending.

The audience are only whacked insofar as at only certain points they are looking from Tony's point of view. Every time the bell at the door rings we look at Tony's face and then we see with him who is entering the diner. In one instance he and we expect to see Meadow, the scene jump cuts to black.

I suppose Chase was sending a message that when it seems everything is relatively under control, as you suggest in your first post, then the unexpected will occur.

So do you think tony was killed? I still think that chase wanted us to assume Tony was going to get whacked. You were suspicious of the black guys, you were suspicious of the truck driver, you were suspicious of the mog guy. He even gets up to go to the bathroom typical of the godfather scene. All leading for the audience to believe at any second someone was going to get blow away. True "you never hear or see it or expect it, and the only thing everyone never expected was the fade to black ending, hence we the viewers were whacked and the show was over for good.

Commendatore wrote:I still think that chase wanted us to assume Tony was going to get whacked.

Interesting that you think that Chase wanted to tease the audience rather than placing that assumption firmly in the mind of the viewer once the scene would end and then be reflected upon. For many viewers it appeared that nothing happened. That was chiefly a complaint.

Commendatore wrote:You were suspicious of the black guys, you were suspicious of the truck driver, you were suspicious of the mog guy.

Most people's attention was on the table and whether or not Meadow would park her car. The tension was happening outside, heightened by Meadow looking like she was about to be hit by the SUV as she was running across the street. However Chase was signalling possible threats as you mentioned. What is remarkable is that Tony was oblivious to them when he might have been highly aware of them as in most other times. With his family around him he kept his guard down - in the same way Phil Leotardi did at the service station.

Commendatore wrote: [Mog] even gets up to go to the bathroom typical of the godfather scene. All leading for the audience to believe at any second someone was going to get blow away.

Did the audience think that on the initial viewing? Like I said most people were oblivious to all these signals and these only became obvious with subsequent viewings. The message that was conveyed wasn't a tease of possibilities but rather a solution to what happened and why there was a sudden cut to silent black.

Commendatore wrote:True "you never hear or see it or expect it, and the only thing everyone never expected was the fade to black ending, hence we the viewers were whacked and the show was over for good.

Chase never hinted that the audience was whacked. He made it quite clear that he never intended to fool them. He gave them credit for being intelligent, having an attention-span and not being spoon fed. Besides how do you whack an audience anyway? The scene was very carefully constructed with a definite and definitive denoument.

Perhaps the reason Chase wants us to assume Tony was hit because when it was all over that was the only possible outcome. What is the purpose of keeping "alive" a fictional character? And as far as we know the audience is still alive (or most of them since 2007).

I suppose the real question after all this time - why does anyone want to assume or believe Tony didn't die in the ultimate scene?

Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. there were dozens of fictional characters in the series. Were we supposed to assume that all of them dropped dead at once?

Is it so hard to believe that Chase was simply done with it all and didn't want to write an ending? He had already made all but a few of the characters insufferable by the end. Dragging in that butt ugly, non-acting Juliana Margulies and making her a love interest for both Chris and Tony was a sign of an uninterested creator doing a favor for someone.

This statement of yours that Tony never lived anyway doesn't make a point. None of the characters,( aside from a few celebrities who played themselves, David Lee Roth, Frank Sinatra Jr and his sister, Ben Kingsley, Lauren Bacall, etc.) never lived either.

The snap to black was just the end of the series, to me. Tony's fate was left to the imagination.